Back to basics: Greene simplifies approach, twirls gem

ARLINGTON -- After a promising but inconsistent first month of the season, Reds starter Hunter Greene seemed to have distilled his approach down to the absolute essentials on Saturday. It didn’t require a complicated formula for him to throw seven dominant, scoreless innings in an 8-4 Reds victory over the Rangers at Globe Life Field. All he had to do was keep his elite fastball in the strike zone and waste as few pitches as possible.

By making things simpler, Greene has made hitting against him a more complex task.

“Watching myself and my outings, a lot of times I’m beating myself and not trusting myself on attacking the zone,” Greene said. “You gotta get the first dude before the second dude.”

On Saturday, Greene sat down the first nine dudes, and 21 out of 23 Rangers hitters overall. He allowed only one hit and issued just one walk while striking out six.

His gem was one of the sharpest performances of the 24-year-old righty’s career, and certainly his best in six starts this season.

Normally one of the hardest-throwing pitchers in baseball, Greene may have dialed his fastball velocity down half a mph Saturday -- or at least the radar gun suggested he did. But in exchange, he filled the zone with strikes and barely needed any other pitches to breeze through the Rangers’ lineup.

“In some ways that fastball is like multiple pitches if you can locate it in different areas of the zone,” Reds manager David Bell said.

According to Statcast, 97 of Greene's 98 pitches were four-seam fastballs or sliders.

“He’s making improvements -- today he did it with fastball command,” Bell said. “He threw a lot of fastballs -- he kept them honest with the slider -- but really he was on the attack the whole day and so he was able to accomplish both going deep into the game and limiting runs. It was a great start.”

Greene retired the first nine batters he faced before his perfect-game bid ended with a leadoff walk in the fourth inning. His pursuit of a no-hitter lasted until the fifth, when Rangers third baseman Josh Smith greeted Greene with a leadoff double.

Greene did not surrender another hit after that. Smith was the only runner Greene allowed into scoring position all day.

The fifth-inning situation was as close to a dangerous scenario as Greene got into, and he maneuvered his way out of it unscathed with help from a stellar play by shortstop Elly De La Cruz.

Smith took third on a flyout, and then De La Cruz saved a run and ended the inning. He charged toward his right to field a grounder from Travis Jankowski -- one of the Rangers’ fastest sprinters over the past two seasons -- and unleashed an off-balance, slightly underhanded dart to first base to narrowly beat out Jankowski.

“That was one of the best plays I’ve seen all year,” Bell said. “He made it look relatively easy, but with that runner? Charging, but also going away from first base -- just a great play and a big play in the game.”

The Reds then scored four times in the top of the seventh, with a pair of two-run homers from Jonathan India and Will Benson. Greene set the Rangers down in order in the bottom half, ending his start with a brisk inning much like his first four.

Greene insisted there hasn’t been a major shift in his mentality; he believes he’s merely executing better.

“There’s really not a different approach other than just filling up the zone, competing and trusting my pitches,” he said. “I haven’t done like a complete 360.”